OFWs protest direct hiring ban in HK

By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
02/09/2009

MANILA, Philippines—Filipino workers in Hong Kong mounted their first major protest on Sunday against the ban on direct hiring imposed in January by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

According to the United Filipinos in Hong Kong-Migrante, about 1,000 Filipino workers trooped to the Philippine consulate general in Hong Kong and presented a petition against the ban signed by 12,130 Filipino migrants.

The workers formed last January 18 a new coalition called the Samahan laban sa Katiwalian ng mga Recruitment Agencies at Patakarang Ban sa Direct Hiring (SKRAP, Association against the Corruption of Recruitment Agencies and the Ban on Direct Hiring), to protest the Memorandum Circular No. 04 of the POEA.

The coalition is composed of 75 Filipino migrant organizations in Hong Kong.

The POEA re-imposed the direct hiring ban in Hong Kong at the beginning of 2009, saying overseas employment coursed through recruitment agencies would ensure the protection of the rights and welfare of overseas Filipino workers.

But the workers’ groups opposed this. “It is never for our protection. The only interest that the ban on direct hiring is serving is that of the government and unscrupulous recruiters--not us, migrant workers,” said Dolores Balladares-Pelaez, chair of the United Filipinos in HK-Migrante and convener of the SKRAP coalition.

Pelaez, in a statement emailed to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said that a survey of the Hong Kong-based Mission for Migrant Workers showed that about 74 percent of Filipino domestic workers in the Chinese territory were employed through recruitment agencies.

Of those who were recruited by agencies, 54 percent paid P60,000 to more than P100,000 as agency fees, according to the survey.

“Overcharging of recruitment fees and the lack of government protection and services are the widespread and serious problems we are facing, not direct hiring. Direct hiring is in fact the only recourse we have to get saved from overcharging of greedy recruiters,” Pelaez said.

The OFW leader added that placement fees are supposed to have been abolished by the recruitment guidelines of the POEA issued in 2007 but recruiters continue to collect huge amount of fees under the guise of training charges.

“What the guidelines did was to worsen the problem as they removed any legal limitation to what recruiters can charge to migrants. Up to now, no effective actions have been done to stamp up overcharging,” she lamented.

Before the guidelines were issued, the legal limit for a placement fee was approximately P20,000 or the equivalence of a one-month salary, Pelaez recalled.

Pelaez claimed that the conciliation process that the Philippine consulate has been using to resolve disputes on overcharging was slow. The complaints against recruiters are no longer pursued once the complaining OFWs go home, according to Pelaez.

The migrant leader said overcharging has been happening too in other countries. In Taiwan, she said, placement fees for OFWs ranged from P80,000 to P140,000 and paid in cash or through salary deductions. In the Middle East, placement agencies “do not care about the plight of domestic workers and even force a number of them to work with other employers with no or little pay until their loans are paid,” she said.

“Protection will never come from recruiters who are only concerned with how much profit they can get from us. Ban on direct hiring is just the government’s way to pass on its responsibility of providing assistance to the OFWs to the recruitment agencies,” she explained.

Pelaez said the recruitment agencies have been pushing Congress to pass a law on compulsory employment liability insurance so that they could be relieved of the burden of money claims or damages sought by workers.

Pelaez said the ban on direct hiring was an incentive to recruiters in line with the government’s policy of intensifying Filipino labor exports. She said that such move was reflected in the Administrative Order No. 247 issued by the Malacañang last month that directed recruiters to be more aggressive in exploring labor markets.

“The ban is not the answer to our problems. In these times of crisis, what we need are concrete protection and services and not license for recruiters to overcharge nor a more intensified labor export,” said.

POEA tried to ban direct hiring twice—through MC-41 in 1994 and MC-04 in 2008. Due to the widespread protests, MC-41 was scrapped while the MC-04 was held in abeyance.